


an actor in a play

by ncfan



Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: Canon Speculation, Gen, Mild Spoilers, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 17:43:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13885860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: The sight of her own reflection always surprises her.





	an actor in a play

**Author's Note:**

> So this answers some questions and yet none of them, but I wanted to leave things fairly ambiguous in light of potential future revelations. In other words: Meet Festivia. Her hair is full of secrets.

Festivia never leaves her bedchamber without a headband. She’s quite fond of them, for the headband is quite an invention, isn’t it? It can keep her wild, coarse dark hair out of her face when all the hairpins in the world prove unequal to the task and Glossaryck has grabbed her hands to keep her from using the wand and accidentally setting her hair on fire again.

(That first time was an accident. It _was_. She imagines as if the moment is fresh again innumerable pairs of skeptical eyes scanning her face for falsehoods. _It was an accident_.)

The headband has less utilitarian uses, as well. Festivia rarely wears her crown—the crown is too ornate for her tastes, sits so heavy on her head that her neck soon begins to ache—so a jeweled headband serves much the same purpose that her crown would, without making her neck feel as though it will snap the way she would snap a twig in her hands. It’s an _accessory_. It attracts and distracts, tells the story that she wants to tell, and helps spare her having to tell the one she doesn’t, even if they all make guesses anyways.

(Stories, oh, stories. When she was a little girl, Festivia loved them, begged her mother for story after story after story. She was a greedy child. What she had, she always wanted more of. But Festivia is a woman now, and she’s not so fond of stories as she once was.)

She takes her hands away from the headband and stares herself down in the mirror, trying smiles to see how they fit, until she settles on something that isn’t quite a grin, a thin flash of teeth without giving too much away. That should be good. The court doesn’t like it when anyone shows too much of their teeth, let alone when it’s Queen Butterfly.

Her face… Festivia feels a little jolt when she drinks in the sight of her own face, but that’s nothing unusual. The sight of her own reflection is always just a little jarring. It’s like she’s looking at a painting that moves and breathes instead of the reflection of a flesh-and-blood woman. Sometimes she wonders if it’s the wine taking its toll, but she gets that sensation when sober as well as when drunk. She’s always expecting there to be something different…

…But she’s always just the same. Long, black hair that tumbles in waves that aspire to be curls but never quite manage it, succeeding only in becoming a tangled mess after a few hours. A long, thin face that turns to an ivory mask in harsh light. Frosty green eyes that glint with distant fire when she leaves the castle and defends her home against those who would destroy it. Four-point diamond marks that…

It’s funny. Even after a lifetime, she still brings her hand to her cheek and expects to feel paint. She feels only flesh there, of course—the idea of paint was a childhood fantasy, something she should never have given weight to start with—but there’s just a spark of unreality glimmering beneath flesh.

Her eyes stray to white bone bound in cloth, curling out of hair, and her eyes skate away again.

But enough of this; the morning’s come. Queen Festivia has work to do, a dance to dance, a part to play, a reputation to redeem. There are siege works to inspect, preparations to be made for a ball, papers to sign, relatives to visit, children to console. All of Mewni is her mirror, and it reflects back something very different than what she sees in glass.

So shake off the past, she tells herself, and never let them see your true face.


End file.
